Category: Lunch

This recipe is just the answer to your prayers about focaccia. It’s an opportunity to stick your fingers in the dough to make holes. It’s the delicious, aromatic bread to stuff your face with. It’s everything you ever wanted!

I made this for my boss who ate like a tonne of it straight away. I had to make more.

So, yeah. I recommend it truly and honestly. Don’t be afraid of the mighty focaccia.

This beauty takes its sweet time rising. But what else would we be doing in life? Isn’t being the slave and invested carer of this delicious bread the best fate we can really achieve?

Ingredients for the dough:

3 1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp dry yeast

1 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp fine salt

1 3/4 cup warm water

2 sundried tomatoes

Ingredients for the oil:

1/2 cup olive oil

2 minced cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp rosemary

1/2 tsp basil

1/2 oregano

coarse salt

Mix the dough ingredients with a spoon until combined. The dough will be sticky like hell, so just mix with a spoon and cover with plastic wrap. Leave to rise for 1 hour.

In the meantime combine all the ingredients of your oil, except the salt. If you have any of the herbs fresh, go for it, mince them and use. If you only have dried herbs, use those. Fresh is always better but I rarely have all these plants around the house. One or two at most…

After 1 hour spread baking paper on a baking tray. Gently press the air out of the dough and tip it over on the baking paper. Spread it more or less evenly on the tray. Don’t roll it or handle it too much. This dough is like a cat, too independent to accept cuddles. Cover with plastic wrap again and leave for 15 minutes.

Make holes in the dough using your fingers. It’s a good idea to dip your fingers in the oil you prepared to avoid the dough sticking to your fingers.

Leave under wrap for another hour to rise.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Cover the focaccia with the oil mixture. Follow with coarse salt.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes – until golden brown on top.

Devour!

Have it with mozzarella maybe, some sliced cucumber, tomato, some delicious leaves like rocket/arugula. Have it with parma ham, with olives, with whatever tickles your fancy.

It freezes well. You can microwave it, but do always put a little container/glass of water in the microwave with it so it doesn’t dry out. And don’t microwave for very long.

This is one of my favourite things to eat in the world. I make a risotto two, three times a month and I always enjoy both cooking and eating it. I really like the creamy arborio rice and if you decide to make this dish, please use arborio and not jasmin or any other rice variety. Arborio is the one to use, because it will give you this creamy, starchy texture.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 stalk celery

1 cup broccoli, divided into small florets

1 1/3 cup arborio rice

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

salt & pepper

Place butter and oil in a pan. Set the heat to medium. Mince the onion and garlic and add to the pan. Chop celery into very tiny pieces and add to the pan.

Divide broccoli into small florets and add to the pan. Stir and add dry arborio rice. Let it fry until you see that it is slowly becoming translucent.

Add wine, stir and cook until the wine has been absorbed. Add chicken stock and let cook for another 10 minutes or so. Keep an eye on the dish and if you see that it has absorbed all of the liquid but the rice is still too hard to eat, add more stock or even hot water if you have no more stock.

Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Once the rice is soft enough to eat add parmesan, stir, and serve.

Winter is getting closer and everybody starts talking about kale and putting it in recipes, right? They have a point, since kale is in season now and it is the least bitter when grown in cold temperatures.

And, as I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to nutrition, I went ahead and checked that kale has some amazing amounts of vitamin K, A and C. If you make this soup and eat it and then want to feel extra, especially good about doing it, have a look at this link. It explains a lot about the benefits of kale. World’s Healthiest Foods – Kale

The beans aren’t just a filler either, I used lima beans and found some awesome info about them on that website. Have a look for some info on whatever beans you use.

This is a recipe for a hearty, warming autumn soup. Even though it does not contain meat, it leaves your belly satisfied and full.

This amount serves 4.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely diced (I use a food processor)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 carrot, cut lengthwise and then chopped

1 vegetable stock cube

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 tsp Herbes de Provence

1 tsp marjoram (use oregano if you have no marjoram)

1/2 tsp salt

1 can white beans (lima/haricot/navy, whatever is easiest to get)

2 cups kale, finely chopped

1 1/2 liter water form the kettle

salt & pepper to taste

In a pot, heat the olive oil and add onion and garlic. Let cook for a couple of minutes until the onions soften.

Add the cubed potatoes and carrots. Stir to coat with oil and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Pour the water in and follow with celery, herbs and bring into a rolling boil. Cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are almost ready.

Add kale and drained and rinsed beans and cook for 5 more minutes, just enough for all the flavours to blend.

Check the taste and add more salt if needed. Season with freshly ground pepper.

I come from Poland, where when I was growing up, Halloween was heard of but certainly not celebrated. I am just that old. And I remember very well, when I first saw Halloween in Chicago, what a shock that was, all these pumpkins and skeletons out on people’s lawns seemed such overkill. Awesome overkill, I must add. And I remember as well, my first Halloween in Ireland, when a coworker showed up in a full pirate costume to his office job. I barely knew what to say, that’s how surprised I was. There were more people showing up dressed up that day and some years later I was happily dressing up with them too. I have absolutely nothing against Halloween. It’s an awesome, happy holiday.

But I am just totally inexperienced in it, and I often feel like I don’t understand it. So whenever I try to do something for Halloween, I feel like I totally don’t know what I am doing. For this year’s Halloween post, I wanted to make muffins with red cream cheese filling. It was supposed to look like blood. Blood in muffins, I don’t know. Is that a good idea? Or not at all?

So I started experimenting and whatever I added to cream cheese, it came up cute, pastel pink colour, which would be great for a 4 year old girl’s cake or something. Not the colour of blood, certainly. I tried red food colouring, until I ran out of it, I tried cherry juice, red currant juice. Forget it, I ended up with cutsie pink muffins.

And that was my best idea anyway…

So I decided that I should stop pretending that I know anything about Halloween and trying to make something I don’t know how to make. This is too much BS. So instead, you’re getting this recipe: banana pancakes. They are sweet, delicious, they taste like bananas and you can eat them on all days of the year, Halloween or not.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

4 eggs

1/4 cup flour

icing sugar for decoration

1 Tbsp oil or butter for frying

Peel bananas and mash them in a bowl until more or less smooth. Add eggs and flour and whisk until the mixture is uniform.

Heat the butter in a pan and pour the dough in small portions. These pancakes are best when they are not too big and not too thick. Small pancakes are easy to flip and stay in one piece much easier.

Pickle soup is a classic in Poland and if you google it, you will find plenty of recipes and explanations in English. It’s my favourite soup, with an interesting, sour flavour. Do try it and don’t be put off by the idea. It’s delicious! This is one of those soups that leaves you warm, satisfied and feeling amazing.

Regarding the pickles to use for this recipe, you will need to find pickles which have no vinegar in the jar. Here in Norway, I am able to find them in imported food shops, where they are selling a lot of Turkish and Middle-Eastern foods. I can see a lot of recipes out there not telling readers this detail and I learnt the hard way. The vinegar pickles won’t lose their vinegary madness while in the soup and you’ll end up eating heated vinegar – not great!

This recipe yields 4 yummy portions

Ingredients:

4 potatoes

2 carrots

1 parsnip

1 small piece of celeriac

1/2 cup single cream

6 pickles, processed or grated into a pulp

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp tomato paste

to season:

1/2 tsp sweet paprika

1/2 tsp dried parsley leaf

1/2 tsp black ground pepper

salt to taste

Peel and cube potatoes and place in a saucepan. Add 1 1/2l (3 pints) water and put on medium heat.

Peel and dice carrots, parsnip and celeriac and add to potatoes. Bring to boil and continue cooking until soft.

While these are cooking, add paprika, parsley, ground pepper and salt.

In a frying pan, melt the butter and once hot, add pickles and fry until slightly thicker.

Once you check the soup and you are sure that the potatoes and other veggies are soft enough to eat, add the pickles and tomato paste, and stir.

This is one of those super simple recipes. It comes from my grandma who has enjoyed it any time she was able to get the ingredients. She really likes to add a lot of cream to her recipes. I asked her about it and she said that when she was a young girl in the Second World War they had little food. Her family was from the countryside and they managed to keep a cow despite all of the difficulties. She said that sometimes these milk products coming from the cow were lifesavers and the only thing they had for the whole day. You’d think that would put a person off cream for life but instead cream and milk are my grandma’s favourite things.

About the ingredients for this recipe. The pasta grandma uses is a short, thin pasta, thin like angel hair or capellini but short. I imagine other small pasta types could be used here with success.

For sausage my grandma’s favourite choice here is hotdogs. You can also use kielbasa, wieners or anything else that you like.

You’ll also notice marjoram. If this herb is alien to you, just use oregano instead. Also, if you like your food spicy, this can be delicious with cayenne pepper.